


Eating Gender Stereotypes for Breakfast

by MarbleGlove



Series: Comment Fic [7]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010), Highlander - All Media Types, Inception (2010), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Genderbending, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-01
Updated: 2012-06-01
Packaged: 2017-11-18 20:14:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/564834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarbleGlove/pseuds/MarbleGlove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>This was written in response to the prompt:<br/>Inception, girl!Arthur/Eames, I never loved nobody fully / always one foot on the ground</p>
          </blockquote>





	1. Highlander: I self-identify as a survivor

I think my next identity will related in some way to the transgender community.   
  
They are fascinating. They identify themselves so closely with a gender. It's who they are, and the fact that they have been mislabeled by biology is something that they can and will correct.   
  
It's a new way of thinking, and the only way to survive is to learn new ways.   
  
Because I don't identify as a gender at all. Oh, Adam Pierson is decidedly male. But Jennifer Adamson had been just as decidedly female. And Death had been neither. Death was a phenomenon and a force of nature.   
  
I am lucky to have been born--or created, or come into being--with a runner's body rather than a brawler's. Sharp features and few curves have allowed me to run from danger and hide from greed and change identities with ease.   
  
I read MacLeod's chronicle describing him dressing as Kate the shrew for a performance. It was hilarious but also heart-rending. Because as ugly as he had been as a woman, he had also been unbelievable. I don't know anyone over the age of a thousand who has not spent at least one life living as the opposite gender.   
  
I try to alternate. It prevents people from easily tracking me.   
  
I've been married 68 times: 43 wives and 25 husbands. Mostly widows with multiple children already, though, since I had no desire to repeat the mistake of my 6th, 9th, and 10th marriages and be abandoned as infertile.   
  
The woman's movement has done wonderful things recently to break down the gender barriers that have been building up for the majority of my life.  
  
But what most people have forgotten, even the younger immortals, was that gender wasn't the big divide it is now when I was born (or created or appeared.)   
  
The big divide in those days was those who could provide and those who could not. Those who could survive and those who could not.  
  
My various identities are male or female as they are needed.   
  
But Methos, Methos isn't male or female... Methos is a survivor.

 

\----

 

A/N: I don’t generally write in the first person (unless I’m writing as, you know, _me_.) But the English language is terribly remise in not having a gender-neutral third-person pronoun. I have a rant about the problems inherent in this linguistic failure and this fic barely escaped being consumed by that rant. Anyway, if you have specific thoughts, suggestions or opinions regarding writing in the first person, I’d love to hear them.


	2. Inception: I eat gender stereotypes for breakfast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written in response to the prompt:  
> Inception, girl!Arthur/Eames, I never loved nobody fully / always one foot on the ground

Julie Arthur had been a tom-boy growing up and when she attended her high school prom in a tux, everyone in town had read that as confirmation that she was a lesbian rather than that she disliked dresses.  
  
That had put paid to any potential love life there, but she had been just as happy to not have any ties to that life. She had plans.  
  
She kept her feet on the ground and she was going places and had no time for love and little interest in men who wanted girls.  
  
Once she had left the army (they hadn't known what to do with her either and her dress uniform had involved a skirt), she had found her place as a scarily competent criminal planner. She wore suits.  
  
Despite the fact that she never actually hid her gender, the type of people who hit on her changed from being men who wanted girls to men who wanted boys. It wasn't an improvement.  
  
Eames, though... Eames was different. He was a slob who was more comfortable in a dress than Arthur had ever been. He was a man who could _be_ a woman in a way that most men couldn't or wouldn't.  
  
Most of the others assumed that made him gay. Arthur still kicked herself for making the same assumption when he had flirted with her. She had turned him down sharply and repeatedly.  
  
She had finally been fed up when he had continued to flirt shamelessly while she was trying to work on a job. She had sat back, and told him directly that "I would have expected someone in your position, Mr. Eames, to correctly identify the gender of your target."  
  
He had looked surprised. "Darling Arthur, what makes you think I haven't?"  
  
"But. You." It had been a long time since something had truly thrown her like that simple question.  
  
"You like wearing suits, and dislike dresses--except when they are painted onto one of my own voluptuous bodies--and I desperately want to do all sorts of athletic things with your body that require neither."  
  
"Hmm." Arthur had contemplated this new piece of information. She liked to analyze new information and figure out the implications before making any decisions.  
  
"We work in dreams, darling, we eat gender stereotypes for breakfast. But sex is still a whole lot of fun."  
  
She didn't think she had ever had sex with someone who knew who and what she was.  
  
"Very well, my hotel room, after dinner. But not during work hours." She had turned back to her work, but not before seeing Eames grin.  
  
She hid her own in her papers.


	3. X-Men: At least there wasn't a skirt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written in response to the prompt:  
> X-men (any verse); girl!logan/wolverine +/any character; she was gonna save the day wearing flannel and cowboy boots.

Logan looked at the uniform they were trying to offer her. It was spandex.  
  
It looked stunning on Jean and Scott always looked like an underwear model anyway. But Logan herself was short and stocky and perfectly happy with how she looked but how she looked sure as hell wasn't wearing spandex.  
  
She wore flannel because it was comfortable and cowboy boots because they were useful. And for all the snide comments she could hear, either because they wanted her to hear or because she had damned sharp hearing, it hadn't effected her feminine wiles any. When she wanted to sleep with a man, she told him so, and for the most part the guy said "Yes, ma'am!" and left the next morning tired but happy.  
  
At least the costume didn't involve a skirt. Someone must have been bright enough to avoid that even if they weren't bright enough to avoid the costume entirely.  
  
The Weapon X outfits had involved skirts.  
  
Most of the experimental subjects at Weapon X had been female. It was for the first set of experiments after all, rather than trying to get anyone for real use, so women were the useful combination of having a higher pain threshold (due to the needs of childbirth) and being more biddable (due to being the gentler sex.)  
  
That's what they thought, at least.  
  
Miss Logan had been able to out-fight and out-drink every man she met since before she had been snatched by the program and by the time she had broken out she may have been a bit more broken than before but her sense of stubborn had just grown to fill the cracks.  
  
She sure as hell wasn't going to obey their orders, she didn't obey society's either. And if Xavier thought he could order her into spandex, he had another think coming.  
  
Sure, she had agreed to help save the day, but she'd damn well do it in her own flannel and boots.

 


	4. Hawaii 5-O: Looking the part

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written in response to the prompt:   
> Hawaii Five-0, Steve/girl!Danny + Grace, someone confuses Steve for Grace's dad

Being with Steve was, in some ways, just as difficult as being with Richard had been. Steve was tall and slender and built and just plain gorgeous. Danny... wasn't.  
  
Danny was a short and loud-mouthed and no one at her old precinct had ever understood why tall handsome Richard with his gorgeous accent had ever dated much less married her. She doubted anyone at the new precinct would ever guess or even believe evidence that she was now with Steve.  
  
She was fine with her body. She had a great body. When she dressed to impress, she was damned impressive. She had the kind of curves to make a grown man drool. (As the saying went: She was broad where a broad should be broad.) And she had a right hook that could take down criminals and drooling idiots alike.  
  
But if she wanted to be taken seriously in the workplace she wore suits to cover the T&A and got right into people's faces with words and gestures. She was a detective and a good one, and if that meant that she was just one of the guys that was just fine.  
  
But, well, there were trade offs and even if she was happy with what she had, there were times when she was very aware of what she didn't.  
  
No one, beside her, was surprised when Richard left her. She didn't look like someone who could be Richard's wife any more than she looked like someone who could be Steve's lover.  
  
Which is why it's so surprising when the guy at the restaurant Steve was showing her and Grace had told Steve that "If your daughter get's bored, she can play in the courtyard while the food is prepared."  
  
Steve had turned to ask Grace whether she wanted to play and Danny had just sat there, not sure what to say.  
  
She was Grace's mother. That had to be obvious. Grace looked like Danny, or at least a lot more like Danny than she looked like Steve. Grace raced off to play, still in sight of their table, and Steve gave Danny a look.  
  
"What?"  
  
"You look like something happened. What's the matter?"  
  
"The waiter thought you were Grace's father."  
  
"Yeah?" Steve looked blank, like he didn't know where she was going with this.  
  
"He thought we were Grace's parents. He thought we were a couple."  
  
"Uh, Danny, we are a couple. We're not exactly subtle about it."  
  
"Oh come on, no one thinks we're a couple! We don't look like a couple!"  
  
Steve looked blank again, but this time like maybe Danny had said the wrong thing. "I think we look like a couple. I think we _are_ a couple."  
  
Okay, maybe she had said the wrong thing, but still, she waved that away. "Yes, yes, we're a couple, but aside from the guys saying we argue like a married couple, we don't look like it. You know we don't."  
  
Steve got one of those looks on his face. He checked to see that Grace was fine outside and not paying any attention to them at the window, which really should have been a clue that he was going to reach out and pull her into his lap.  
  
She made an undignified squawk, and started telling him off.  
  
He smiled at her and she paused her rant. It was a pause, not a stop, she wasn't sure if she was ready to stop, but... "What?"  
  
"We definitely look like a couple."  
  
And okay, Danny thought, sitting in his lap, enjoying the warmth of his hands on her hips, perhaps he had a point there.


	5. Highlander: the confusing results of gender stereotypes

"Methos?" The look on MacLeod's face was priceless.   
  
"Have a beer." She tossed him a can in a gentle arc that would either allow him to catch it easily or hit him in the balls if he didn't break out of his shock soon enough.   
  
He managed to catch it, but only barely.   
  
Methos is the world's oldest man and the Watchers are constantly confused by why they can't keep track of him. They are, after all, extremely experienced in tracking the immortals, those great timeless warriors and scholars.   
  
No one, historically, pays any attention to the crowds of women, though. Why bother, really? Not even the Watcher's bother much, since most of the female immortals live on holy ground or flit from one male immortal lover to another.   
  
Or so they think.   
  
Methos finds this a combination of useful and annoying. She's hardly the only female immortal to simply not be noticed by anyone.   
  
Somehow MacLeod has managed to avoid this basic social conditioning. She has known she would have to be increasingly careful of her identity as the women's movement has progressed and gender-based prejudice became less prevalent, but MacLeod should have all the prejudices of his upbringing in the Clans.   
  
Apparently the combination of immortal women he's run with, though, has managed to wear that down.   
  
In a crowd, most headhunters won't even look for a woman.   
  
She has plenty of experience dressing as a man.  
  
In fact, she mostly alternates her lives. One life as a man, one life as a woman, and no one ever manages to track her between the lives.  
  
She slept with men or women as she desired or as was appropriate; she even married whichever gender was appropriate for the time. She tend towards the more modest cultures, in her travels, where full covering with appropriate for both genders. It was hard (though not impossible, funny enough) to cross-dress while naked.   
  
She had been a horseman with Kronos, Caspian and Silas for a thousand years and they had all seen each other naked, but they were gods and Methos the eldest of them all, and Death was so _obviously_ male, that they had always been _brothers_. Even when she went into battle butt-naked, the few survivors would describe her as male.   
  
Eve Pierson, though, is decidedly female, in her jeans and tank top. It made getting into the Watchers much easier: all of her Watcher identities have been female. They know that women can pass unnoticed where men cannot, they simply don't take that knowledge to its logical conclusion.   
  
But looking at MacLeod's wide eyes and surprise-but-not-denial that she is _both_ Methos and female, she knows that there's change in the air.   
  
The world is different, she is different, and life is about to get interesting.

 


End file.
